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When grief becomes routine, it’s no longer healing—it’s survival. THE MOURNING OF is a delicate and haunting meditation on loss, directed and written by Merced Elizondo, that captures the rituals we build to keep memories alive. Instead of exploring grief as a single moment of heartbreak, this short film peeks into the quiet, repetitive gestures that define a person trapped between remembrance and recovery. What begins as an empathetic story of mourning slowly turns into a portrait of obsession, showing how even love and sorrow can corrode when left unchecked.

There’s a reason the Peanuts holiday specials burrow so deeply into memory: they treat childhood with the seriousness it deserves. Underneath Snoopy’s doghouse theatrics and Lucy’s sarcasm is a worldview that accepts disappointment and still chooses kindness. PEANUTS: 75TH ANNIVERSARY ULTIMATE TV SPECIALS COLLECTION captures that tone across forty remastered TV specials, wrapping decades of televised memories into a single set. It’s less a “product” than a trip on nostalgia—the kind of release that restores a family tradition.

The quiet moments where genius is born are exactly where KEY OF GENIUS finds its cadence. Directed by Daniel Persitz and co-written by Academy Award winner David Seidler, this twelve-minute short film distills the extraordinary true story of Derek Paravicini—blind, autistic, and gifted with a musical intuition that transcends comprehension—into a moving portrait of mentorship, discovery, and connection.

Released in 1992, BODY PUZZLE stands as one of the final gasps of Italy’s once-glorious giallo tradition—a cinematic language defined by color, style, and perversity. By the early ’90s, audiences had shifted toward Hollywood thrillers like THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, and what icon Lamberto Bava crafted here feels like a haunting farewell to a genre that once ruled Italian horror. However, it is certainly not without its charm.

There’s a reason ILSA, SHE WOLF OF THE SS continues to haunt conversations about exploitation and censorship nearly fifty years after its release. It’s not a film that hides behind metaphor or restraint—it’s raw, offensive, and proudly coarse. What makes Kino Lorber’s new 4K UHD restoration noteworthy isn’t that it redeems the film, but that it confronts it. This is one of the most notorious examples of 70s grindhouse excess—filmmaking that dared viewers to recoil and look closer.

FLYING DUO is a delicate, personal, and unmistakably authentic short film that captures the ache of displacement through humor, heart, and subtle artistry. Written by Emma Brunet-Campain and directed by Robyn Faye, this ten-minute exploration of loneliness and friendship becomes a celebration of persistence—both within its story and behind the scenes. It’s the kind of short that makes viewers remember the first time they felt swallowed by a city and found comfort in someone who understood.

Idris Elba’s DUST TO DREAMS is a compact, performance-driven short about inheritance—of places, pain, and the courage it takes to keep a legacy alive. Set in Lagos, the film centers on a shy young woman suddenly responsible for her mother’s struggling nightclub, only to be confronted by a father she barely knows. It’s a simple premise, yet the emotions underneath are anything but: grief, resentment, and a stubborn hope that refuses to leave the stage even as the lights flicker.

Trevor Morris makes a striking directorial debut with BUTTERFLY ON A WHEEL, a short film that feels deeply personal yet universally resonant. Morris approaches filmmaking with the same precision he brings to music — layering emotion, rhythm, and structure into something that hums with authenticity.

SOLAR OPPOSITES: SEASON 6 arrives knowing it’s the end, and that shapes everything from the opening jokes to the final note. Stripping the family of its diamond-making machine is the right constraint for a show that’s often delighted in wild gadgetry—by putting the brakes on unlimited sci-fi spending, the season forces Terry, Korvo, Jesse, and Yumyulack to face who they are without instant fixes. It’s a clever narrative throttle: when you can’t buy your way out of a mess, you either adapt or implode. Across ten episodes, the series' final season leans into that mandate with tighter episodes, meaner in the best way, and surprisingly reflective without losing the show’s signature energy.

HANS ZIMMER & FRIENDS: DIAMOND IN THE DESERT plays like a summation of a remarkable career and a statement piece of an icon. Across two and a half hours, the film assembles a setlist of music that marks modern blockbuster memory—DUNE, GLADIATOR, INTERSTELLAR, THE LION KING—then reframes them as living, breathing pieces written for a stage that expects the music to carry everything on its own. This isn’t “clips with an orchestra.” It’s a concert movie that treats the score as the story, letting a hand-picked band and an arena-sized production translate what audiences usually feel under dialogue and picture into a direct, physical experience.

Sequels to revolutionary comedies almost always face impossible expectations, and AIRPLANE II: THE SEQUEL is no exception. Released in 1982, just two years after the smash hit AIRPLANE!, this follow-up attempted to recapture the lightning in a bottle by sending the disaster parody into outer space. The setup is simple but ripe for gags: the first commercial lunar shuttle malfunctions, its computer system goes haywire, and Ted Striker (Robert Hays) once again must save the day, all while reconciling with Elaine (Julie Hagerty). With a cast stacked with recognizable names like Lloyd Bridges, Peter Graves, William Shatner, Rip Torn, and Sonny Bono, the film had every opportunity to ride high on the original’s momentum.

THE LITTLES is a short film that proves you don’t need sprawling mythology or elaborate dialogue to leave an impression. (Although I have nothing to confirm this with, I couldn’t stop thinking that this was a horror homage to the 80s animated series THE LITTLES) At only seven minutes long, it takes a deceptively simple event—a child stubbing her toe on a loose floorboard—and transforms it into a portal to a stranger, more unsettling world. With just one spoken line of dialogue, the film demands that atmosphere, visuals, and sound shoulder the full weight of the story. That gamble pays off.

The story is simple, but the execution walks a tightrope: MURDAUGH: DEATH IN THE FAMILY dramatizes a well-documented tragedy without pretending the audience is coming in cold. That changes how suspense functions. Instead of asking what happened, the show keeps asking why and how—how influence hardens into impunity, how denial becomes a survival tactic, how a community can be both complicit and wounded by the same story. Grounding those questions is a character-forward approach that turns headlines into a lived-in world.

EDGAR ALLAN POE’S THE OVAL PORTRAIT has the right ingredients on paper: a cursed painting, three strangers bound by a past they don’t understand, and the perfect setting—a peculiar antique shop—that practically begs for haunts, whispers, and the feeling that every object carries a memory. What it lacks is the connective tissue that makes a Gothic thriller feel alive. The mood is present, the premise is clear, and a handful of shots achieve the eerie stillness the story calls for. But the execution, especially across the ensemble, pulls attention away from the tension the film is trying to build.

Some films capture the pulse of New York; others catch its indescribable core. THE FRENCH ITALIAN exists somewhere in between—an offbeat comedy of errors about artistic delusion, noisy neighbors, and the complicated way self-importance masquerades as creativity. It’s as funny as it is uncomfortable, not because of how it’s written, but because it's not afraid to shine a light on the satirical elements within the production.